rac

This blog entry is to discuss a method to identify the objects inducing higher amount of redo. First,we will establish that redo size increased sharply and then identify the objects generating more redo. Unfortunately, redo size is not tracked at a segment level. However, you can make an educated guess using ‘db block changes’ statistics. But, you must use logminer utility to identify the objects generating more redo scientifically.

Detecting redo size increase

AWR tables (require Diagnostics license) can be accessed to identify the redo size increase. Following query spools the daily rate of redo size. You can easily open the output file redosize.lst in an Excel spreadsheet and graph the data to visualize the redo size change. Use pipe symbol as the delimiter while opening the file in excel spreadsheet.

The restart of a UNIX server call initialization scripts to start processes and daemons. Every platform has a unique directory structure and follows a method to implement server startup sequence. In Linux platform (prior to Linux 6), initialization scripts are started by calling scripts in the /etc/rcX.d directories, where X denotes the run level of the UNIX server. Typically, Clusterware is started at run level 3. For example, ohasd daemon started by /etc/rc3.d/S96ohasd file by supplying start as an argument. File S96ohasd is linked to /etc/init.d/ohasd.

I’ve recently realized that I hadn’t posted the second version of my presentation — Under The Hood of Oracle Clusterware 2.0: Grid Infrastructure, codenamed UTHOC2. I think it would be very useful as I still see lots of questions being asked, and UTHOC1 covers Oracle RAC 10g and 11gR1 only. 11g Release 2 brought many changes in the clusterware, and the slides needed some good refresh.

I’ve purposely left it as an 11.2.0.1 installation as you can get this from OTN without needing access to My Oracle Support (MOS). The process works just as well for 11.2.0.3 and I would recommend you use that if you do have access to MOS. Remember, if you are doing the RAC installation on Oracle Linux 6 you are going to need 11.2.0.3, so OL5 might be the right option if you are playing around with this at home with no access to MOS.

I spent today updating my Oracle 11gR2 RAC installation on OL6 article. The original article used an older version of VirtualBox , which meant some of the screen shots looked a little dated. It’s now updated to VirtualBox 4.2.6, so it should be a little less confusing for anyone who is new to VirtualBox.

I’ll probably update the OL5 RAC article some time this next week, since that article uses VirtualBox 3.2.8, which is pretty much ancient history now.

Followers of my blog know I like doing virtual RAC installations.When I do these I’m focusing very much on the Oracle side of things, leaving the virtualization tool to handle the hardware virtualization, like networking and shared disk.

A few weeks ago Gilbert Standen contacted me to say he had done a virtual RAC installation using OpenvSwitch to virtualize the network components. He posted some basic tips here. When I mentioned it on G+ and twitter, it generated some interest, so I suggested he write it up with a little more detail. That process has started now on his blog. You can see the first couple of articles here:

There are many questions from few of my clients about asmlib support in RHEL6, as they are gearing up to upgrade the database servers to RHEL6. There is a controversy about asmlib support in RHEL6. As usual, I will only discuss technical details in this blog entry.

ASMLIB is applicable only to Linux platform and does not apply to any other platform.

Now, you might ask why bother and why not just use OEL and UK? Well, not every Linux server is used as a database server. In a typical company, there are hundreds of Linux servers and just few percent of those servers are used as Database servers. Linux system administrators prefer to keep one flavor of Linux distribution for management ease and so, asking clients to change the distribution from RHEL to OEL or OEL to RHEL is always not a viable option.

This is a quick note about reverse path filtering and impact of that feature to RAC. I encountered an interesting problem recently with a client and it is worth blogging about it, with a strong hope that it might help one of you in the future.

Problem

Environment is 11.2.0.2 GI, Linux 5.6. In a 3 node cluster, Grid Infrastructure (GI) comes up cleanly in just one node, but never comes up in other nodes. If we shutdown GI in first node, we can start the GI in second node with no issues. Meaning, GI can be up in just one node at any time.

System Admins indicated that there are no major changes, only few bug fixes. Seemingly, problem started after those bug fixes. But there were few other changes to the environment /init.ora parameter change etc. So, the problem was not immediately attributable to just OS changes.

We know that database blocks are transferred between the nodes through the interconnect, aka cache fusion traffic. Common misconception is that packet transfer size is always database block size for block transfer (Of course, messages are smaller in size). That’s not entirely true. There is an optimization in the cache fusion code to reduce the packet size (and so reduces the bits transferred over the private network). Don’t confuse this note with Jumbo frames and MTU size, this note is independent of MTU setting.